Marvel – all action in 2012

In any other year that had a Batman movie arriving, DC would have the upper hand, but 2012 looks to be HUGE for Marvel…

The Avengers (or 'Avengers Assemble' as it will be known in the UK) had its world premiere in Los Angeles last night with earliest word on the superhero clusterfest being almost wholly positive – to the extent that early predictions on the film's actual opening weekend (May 4th in the US, a week earlier in the UK) could now even eclipse the success of Marvel's Iron Man 2 film (which pulled a $128million opening weekend) and perhaps some recent movie trend-setters. Deadline reports that industry surveys show a 23% first choice for film-goers with 62% saying they were definitely interested in seeing it. Those are huge chunks of the full potential cinema-going audience. It's worth remembering that these numbers are guesstimates, but also being calculated NOW – with excitement growing over the next few weeks. Joss Whedon directed the film which looks certain to be Marvel's best non-sequel outing to date. We'll be covering the Avengers ourselves, with a full review, in about a week's time.

Captain America 2, which will spin out of the main Avengers film, now has a release date of April 4th 2014, though the studio has still to select the film's director.

Not content with an impressive showing on the big-screen, Marvel Television – part of their Marvel Entertainment company – is also active. The company will be fully repped by the CAA agency and is moving forward – bit by bit – on television projects such as Hulk (with Guillermo del Toro attached), AKA Jessica Jones (based on the comicbook 'Alias' – not to be confused with the TV show of that same original name) and The Punisher.

In the ACTUAL comics areana, Marvel have announced that they will be publishing the limited series 'Spider-men' to mark the original web-head's fiftieth anniversary and uniting – for the first time – characters from the main '616' Marvel Universe and the Ultimate line… in this case our Peter Parker and the 'Ultimates'' version, Miles Morales. Spider-man, of course, has his own movie out this year – but this is a character licensed to Sony, rather than being a Marvel Studios' feature.

John Mosby served as the editor of Impact magazine for well over a decade and is now the editor of Impact Online. In a career spanning more than 25 years he has written for over thirty titles including Total Film, Starburst, Film Review, Fantazia, Profile and the Yorkshire Evening Post. He has also published several books including two official tie-ins (Barb Wire and The X-Men) and one - The Cutting Edge - on the history of sword-play in the movies.